Achieving nonagenarian status is an admirable accomplishment for
anybody, regardless of other achievements or lack thereof during those
nine decades. But Science News has plenty of accomplishments to
celebrate on the occasion of its 90th birthday.

Since mimeographed sheets of science news articles were first
distributed as the Science News-Letter in March 1922, our writers and
editors have been embedded in the scientific process. We've
recounted great steps in science's progress and the impact of
technological snafus and natural disasters. Our pages have recorded the
arrival of antibiotics, the discovery of antimatter, the surprise of
nuclear fission and the atomic bomb. Satellites, space probes and lunar
landings. DNA, gene-splicing, genome sequencing and cloning. Three Mile
Island, the 1984 chemical catastrophe at Bhopal and the Japanese
earthquake/tsunami/nuclear fiasco of 2011.

Throughout all these years, the purpose of Science News has
remained the same: to tell everyone who is interested what scientists
are finding out about the world. And to put those findings and their
implications into a context that makes their significance to society
clear. As articulated by E.W. Scripps, the journalist who was
instrumental in founding the organization that publishes Science News,
the institution's objective should be "to present facts in
readable and interesting form"--not for the purpose of promoting
any particular cause, but to provide readers facts upon which they could
base their own opinions.

For the special anniversary section in this issue (Page 20), Senior
Editor Janet Raloff (who has been around for nearly 40 percent of the
magazine's existence) pored over the Science News corpus to
identify the most noteworthy facts that we have presented to the public
in interesting and readable form.

Space constraints allowed highlighting just a few of the many gems
in our archival mine. But they are exemplary samples of the wealth of
science that the last nine decades has witnessed, and of science's
impact on human civilization and individual people. These reminiscences
offer a reminder of how essential science is to the fabric of modern
life. And they illustrate one unchanging truth about science: It is
never static. News from science today continues to flow as swiftly as
ever, and helping people keep up with it all is no less important now
than it was 90 years ago. It's a task that society will need
somebody to do for a long time to come, no doubt even longer than
another 90 years.--Tom Siegfried, Editor in Chief

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